The young man swallowed hard, obviously fighting for control.
“Damn …” Scott felt as though someone had put a stake through his chest. “You need me to make any calls—?”
“No, I already talked to Marcos. He’ll get in touch with everybody else.” He looked at Scott, obviously fighting tears. “I found him, right after the twister hit. I could tell he was in bad shape, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do—couldn’t call 911 because the cell service was down, couldn’t go get help because the roads were trashed. Best I could do was keep the worst of the rain off him, but …” Shaking his head, he looked away, a tear tracking down his filthy, stubbled cheek.
“Hey …” Scott laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. He made it through the night. That’s got to count for something—”
“I can’t stop thinking,” Miguel went on, his left leg bouncing, clearly not hearing any voices except the nasty ones in his own head, “what if he didn’t get help in time—?”
“And you’re only going to make yourself crazy, worrying like that,” Scott said, even though his own voices, making him worry and wonder about Christina, weren’t doing him any favors, either. When he spotted Blake, he waved him over. “I need to go check on my folks, but Blake will stay with you until your family arrives. And listen,” he added as he stood, “you know we’ll help in any way we can. Whatever Javier needs, it’s his. Got that?”
Miguel looked up, hope and terror fighting for purchase in red-rimmed eyes. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Despite Emily’s warning, Scott had no choice but to confront the obviously frazzled nurse at the desk. “Yes?” she snapped, not looking at him.
“I’d like to see my parents. Virginia Alice and John Michael Fortune?”
“Rooms 1B and 1A,” she said, jabbing a pen over her shoulder, “right on the other side of the door—”
“And you have another patient who came in by ambulance around the same time, Christina Hastings? Can you tell me which room she’s in?”
“She a relative, too?”
“No, but—”
“Only family’s allowed to see the patients, sorry.”
“You’re not serious?”
She frowned up at him. “Do I look like I’m in the mood to kid around?”
Frankly, Scott guessed that was a mood she was never in. “Then can you at least tell me her condition?”
“No.”
Scott leaned over the counter, close enough to make the woman back up. “If it hadn’t been for my family,” he said in a low voice, “it’s highly unlikely Miss Hastings would even need to be here right now. So if you don’t mind—”
“Do you see all these people, Mr. Fortune? Do you also see how many more of them there are than us? Now, please, go see your parents and let us get on with what we’re supposed to be doing. Which includes taking care of Miss Hastings.”
When the woman turned her back on him to answer another staff member’s question, Scott realized he’d lost that round. Which did not sit well. But, he thought as he strode toward the exam rooms, damned if he’d lose the next one.
He heard Mike’s agitated voice before he entered their father’s cubicle. Sitting with his ankle crossed over his other knee, his brother was on his phone, conducting business as though his Gucci suit wasn’t filthy and ripped, his thousand-dollar loafers caked in mud. More than that, however, as though their father wasn’t dozing in a hospital bed six feet away, hooked up to an army of machines and looking more vulnerable—more human—than Scott had ever seen him.
Tearing his eyes from his father, he said to Mike, “Somebody’s gonna be all over your ass about that cell phone. If I were you I’d switch to text.”
Behind him John Michael snorted. “Took you long enough.”
Okay, strike the vulnerable part of that description.
“Been a little busy, Dad.” Scott glanced at his brother, getting to his feet and walking out of the cubicle, presumably to continue his conversation without interference. “And Mike’s been with you.”
Their father grunted, his eyes drifting back closed. “True,” he said, his breathing slightly labored. “I can always count on Mike.”
And some things never change, Scott thought, although frankly he was too worn out—and this was neither the time nor the place—to take umbrage. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better. But it’s nothing a good night’s sleep and some decent food won’t cure.”
“So the pain in your chest—?”
His eyes opened again. “Gone. For the most part. It’s nothing, don’t know why everybody’s making such a fuss. They want to keep me overnight. Can you imagine?”
“I think that’s called doing their job.”
John Michael pulled a face. “Sticking it to my insurance company, if you ask me. I intend to fly back tomorrow, though. You’ll make the arrangements, won’t you? Might as well fly out from San Antonio. No sense returning to Red Rock.”
Scott crossed his arms. “Don’t you think you should wait to hear what the doctors have to say?”
“Flight’s only two and a half hours. If need be, I’ll hire a nurse to go with us. Which reminds me, how’s your mother?”
That he should ask about her as an afterthought was no surprise. That it should irritate Scott so much now, when it never had before, was. “I’m about to go look in on her now. Victoria said she was pretty shaken up—”
“No surprise, there. Virginia always has been emotionally fragile.”
“Dad. She just spent the night trapped in a tornado-demolished building. I think she’s entitled to be a little shaken up.”
His father gave him an unreadable look, then said, “Go on, tell Virginia I said to get some rest, but we’re going to be on a plane tomorrow. We need to get home, dammit. And send Mike in, I need to talk to him …”
Moments later his mother greeted him with a slightly dreamy, “Oh, hello, dear,” when Scott walked into her room. Leaning against the side of her bed, Scott took her good hand.
“How are you doing?”
“Better, now.” She frowned at the cast on her wrist, as if not sure how it got there, then yawned. “Although whatever they gave me for the pain makes me very sleepy. And apparently—” she yawned again “—I also got a nasty bump on the back of my head. There goes next week’s hairdressing appointment,” she said on a sigh, then crinkled her pale forehead at Scott. “The doctor said your father and I are going to be moved upstairs, that we should stay overnight. As a precaution.”
“I
